Stanley Kramer made his directorial debut here, following story of a medical intern who marries for money, later becoming a country doctor with an unhappy love life. Surprisingly involving adaptation of Morton Thompson's novel is both cynical and humorous, and Kramer really excels in the scenes behind hospital doors, particularly in the patient montages. He takes a good while to warm up however, and the actors also struggle getting into character. Robert Mitchum doesn't strike me as the medic type, and neither does Frank Sinatra (cutting up à la Jack Lemmon, giving the film some bounce nevertheless),but Olivia de Havilland does good work in the romance department. Second-half of the picture is more assured, if more routine, but the film is quite entertaining on the whole. **1/2 from ****

Nicely cast melodrama from the 1950s with the notable exception of Robert Mitchum in the lead. Despite the miscasting, Mitchum does deliver a strong performance, but I think Kirk Douglas would have done far more with the role of Lucas Marsh.

Olivia DeHavilland has a very convincing Swedish accent in her role as the 30s something nurse who marries Mitchum for love when he's courting her for her money so he can finish medical school. And that's really where the story begins. Mitchum's Lucas Marsh wants that medical career so bad, he'll do anything for it. He's arrogant, self-centered, and when he falls away from the ideal that he sees himself as, it's a come down. Whether having to apologize to Whit Bissell when he challenges him in class, or giving way to passion when he's unfaithful to DeHavilland with Gloria Grahame, he destroys himself bit by bit. When Mitchum makes a mistake in an operation that costs the life of his benefactor Charles Bickford, he's close to suicidal. In the end we're really not sure he's going to live with himself.

The rest of the cast is outstanding. Frank Sinatra in a role similar to Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity functions well as Mitchum's conscience. I also have to single out Lon Chaney, Jr. who in his one scene in the movie as Mitchum's father, delivers one of his best performances.

In the recent biography of Robert Mitchum, Baby I Don't Care, the author says that Stanley Kramer unknowingly assembled one of the biggest group of booze hounds in Hollywood. Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Broderick Crawford, Myron McCormick, and Lon Chaney, Jr. were all legendary in the drinking profession. But God Bless Stanley Kramer who managed to get them all working on a good piece of film making.

This is a long and rather ambitious film that has about as much going for it as it has going against it. The film is about an earnest medical student (Robert Mitchum) who is struggling to pay his way. Unable to scrape up money anywhere, his only prospect is to either quit school or marry spinster Olivia de Havilland. In a very odd bit of casting, de Havilland has had her hair dyed blonde and sports a rather cheesy Swedish accent. Also, while she was only a year older than Mitchum in real life, she plays a woman who appears about a decade older than the virile Mitchum. Mitchum really doesn't love her but he does seem to like her but not appreciate what a great gal she is.

Interestingly enough, de Havilland is not the only Swedish-American in the film. Virginia Christine (known to most Americans as "Mrs. Olsen" from the old Folger's commercials) and Harry Morgan also are on hand. Christine sounded Swedish since she spoke Swedish in real life, but Morgan so over-did the accent it was embarrassing. John Qualen, long known for playing such roles, would have been much better than Morgan, but he was not in the film. Why they chose them to be Swedes, I really don't know, as this was NOT important to the film.

Back to the film. In medical school, Mitchum was a top student with a great mind but he also had a strong superiority complex--and seemed very judgmental of others. Several times throughout the film this became an issue and by the end of the film, this became the main focus of the stirring conclusion.

After medical school, Mitchum and wife went off to a small town to work in a hospital. Oddly, the first and second halves of the movie were almost like two separate movies and both lasted about as long as a shorter full-length movie. In both were an amazing variety of actors that show that this obviously was a big-budget film for first-time director, Stanley Kramer (who went on to much greater things, except for THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION, which was the awful film that immediately followed NOT AS A STRANGER). In support of Mitchum and de Havilland were Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Lon Chaney, Jr. and Lee Marvin (among others). So because of this, you can't blame the mediocrity of the film on the actors and Kramer was a great director. My feeling is that the plot was just too complex and soap opera-like. The film is a good example of a movie that might have been better had it been a bit shorter and simpler, as well as a bit less histrionic (as it was on occasion, such as when de Havilland threw a temper tantrum in a room by herself near the end for no discernible reason whatsoever).

Overall, it's an interesting but obvious film that could have benefited from a bit of a re-write.